vinylfanatics.com

**LFO - Frequencies ★★★★☆**

In the summer of 1991, as the Second Summer of Love's afterglow was still casting long shadows across Britain's cultural landscape, two Leeds art students named Mark Bell and Gez Varley were holed up in a cramped bedsit, armed with little more than a Casio MT-500 keyboard, an Akai S1000 sampler, and an unhealthy obsession with the hypnotic pulse of acid house. What emerged from their sonic laboratory would prove to be one of the most influential electronic albums of the decade, a record that didn't just capture the zeitgeist but helped reshape it entirely.

LFO - an acronym for Low Frequency Oscillator, that fundamental building block of electronic music - had already announced themselves to the world with their debut single "LFO" in 1990, a track so monumentally heavy and alien that it seemed to arrive from some parallel dimension where basslines had achieved sentience. The single's success on Warp Records established the duo as key players in what would become known as "bleep techno," that distinctly Yorkshire strain of electronic music that combined the stark minimalism of Detroit techno with an almost punk-like aggression.

Frequencies, their full-length debut, expanded on that template with the kind of visionary scope that marks truly great albums. This isn't dance music in any conventional sense - it's something far more unsettling and profound. The album opens with "Song," a title that's almost comically understated given the track's alien beauty. Built around a deceptively simple melodic motif, it unfolds with the patience of a master craftsman, each element introduced with surgical precision until the whole thing achieves an almost trance-like momentum.

The genius of Frequencies lies in its ability to sound simultaneously futuristic and primal. "Tan Ta Ra" builds its hypnotic spell from the most basic of materials - a few chords, a relentless rhythm, some judicious filtering - yet the result feels like a transmission from another world. There's something almost ritualistic about these tracks, as if Bell and Varley had tapped into some ancient frequency that predates human civilization.

"What Is House?" poses the question that was haunting electronic music at the time, answering with a track that deconstructs the genre's basic components and rebuilds them into something entirely new. The duo's use of space and silence is as important as their deployment of sound - they understand that in electronic music, what you leave out is often as crucial as what you put in. The track's minimal vocal samples and stark, echoing percussion create an atmosphere of profound isolation, like being alone in a vast warehouse at 4am.

The album's centerpiece, "LFO," remains one of the most devastating pieces of electronic music ever committed to vinyl. That bassline - good God, that bassline - doesn't just anchor the track, it threatens to collapse the very foundations of whatever building you're playing it in. It's a piece of music that seems to exist in a constant state of barely controlled chaos, always threatening to spiral into complete breakdown but somehow maintaining its hypnotic grip.

What's remarkable about Frequencies is how it manages to be both deeply cerebral and viscerally physical. These aren't tracks you simply listen to - they inhabit you, colonize your nervous system, rewire your brain's relationship with rhythm and frequency. There's a darkness to much of the material that reflects the post-industrial landscape of early '90s Britain, but also a strange beauty that suggests possibilities beyond the mundane world.

The album's influence can't be overstated. It provided a blueprint for artists from Aphex Twin to Burial, proving that electronic music could be both experimentally rigorous and emotionally affecting. Mark Bell would go on to produce albums for Björk and Depeche Mode, bringing LFO's sense of sonic adventure to a wider audience, while the album itself has been endlessly reappraised and celebrated by successive generations of electronic music fans.

Listening to Frequencies today, more than three decades after its release, it remains a startling experience. In an era when electronic music has become increasingly polished and predictable, the album's raw, uncompromising vision feels more radical than ever. It's a reminder that the best electronic music doesn't just move your body - it rewires your consciousness, opening up new ways of hearing and being in the world.